A male inmate who hanged himself with a bedsheet at the Hamilton County Jail on Friday was not on suicide watch, Sheriff Jim Hammond said Monday.
Inmates who are on the watch, which requires an inmate to be checked at least every 15 minutes, still might be able to kill themselves, he said.
“You cannot constantly watch everybody,” Hammond said. “And it only takes five minutes to hang yourself.”
The inmate was arrested in Red Bank, Hammond said.
Authorities on Monday did not release any further information, including who the inmate was and what he was charged with, because the investigation is ongoing.
“Due to the sensitive nature of the investigation and the fact it is still pending, no other information will be released,” sheriff’s office spokeswoman Janice Atkinson said in a news release.
An inmate committed suicide in late 2008 in a way similar to Friday’s suicide, according to Chattanooga Times Free Press archives. The inmate, Robert Eugene Trent Jr., 35, tied bedsheets around his neck and to the frame of an upper bunk bed and placed a separate piece of cloth in his mouth, stated a 2008 article titled “Jails see depression at holiday.”
Hammond didn’t know Monday the exact number of suicides that have happened at the jail recently. But “it happens more than I’d like to see it happen,” he said, adding there are also “several attempts every year.”
The sheriff said the jail’s current inmate population is very close to its capacity of 500.